Fasting is one of the largest weight-loss and maintenance trends to arise in recent years. In 2018, it was the eighth most-Googled diet in America. Wall Street Journal’s writer and professor at Berlin’s Charite’ University Medical Center, Dr. Andreas Michalsen, has done extensive follow-up exploration on intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating. He calls it not just another fad diet. The purpose of his research, and that of a multitude of other scientists, has been to help patients with many chronic diseases. These disorders include cancer, high blood pressure, rheumatism, diabetes, bowel conditions, as well as pain syndromes such as migraines and osteoarthritis.
The fasting regime includes no food for a 14 hour period. This might sound extremely difficult to do, but it really applies to self-discipline in your choice of eating hours. In the next few sentences, Dr. Michalsen explains his approach: “If you sleep from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., you have already fasted for eight hours. Now you only need another six. It’s healthy to avoid eating late in the evening to let your body burn energy from food rather than store it (as fat), so if you eat dinner by 7 p.m., that’s another 4 hours.”
Next, he advises the dieter to limit the use of breakfast to coffee or tea with a small piece of fruit. Making lunch to be the first and most important meal of the day will then put the dieter far beyond the necessary 14 hours of fast. The researcher comments “(At lunch) you can eat until you are full.”
In 2016, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports a 69 women’s U.K. led study where participants, consuming most of their calories at lunch, were successful in losing 3.3 pounds more in 12 weeks than those who ate a big dinner. According to Michalsen, “After all, it’s around lunchtime that the body requires the greatest amount of energy for keeping its body temperature up. Less energy thus passes into our fat reserves.”
Here are 4 Specific Reasons why we might choose this eating approach:
1. When we eat, we produce insulin which gets in the way of the body’s molecular process known as autophagy. Using animal studies, our researchers have discovered that autophagy, accomplished through fasting, helps to counteract the aging of cells and builds immunity. In one mice study, the fasting approach seems to have lowered, among the animals, the incidence of fatty livers, pancreatic disease and diabetes.
2. Contributing to brain health, another neurologist has discovered that fasting and restricting calories and exercise, stimulated increases in BDNF, the best-known nerve growth factor. Some limited proof (to be confirmed in more future larger animal studies) has even shown a lower risk of a person developing Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson”s disease and multiple sclerosis.
3. Another research group consisted of 2400 early-staged breast cancer patients. Those women who fasted for 13 hours nightly, within a 7 year period, proved to have 26% less recurrence of tumors. Dr. Michalsen explains “Cancer cells are less able than normal cells to survive a lack of sugar.”
4. Fasting, according to the doctor, is “more than simply restricting calories or nutrients.” He adds that it is a controlled deprivation exercise giving the faster a newly found physical and mental strength. =Indeed, a medical professional husband and wife (friends of my husband and I,) are now fully subscribing to this practice for life. The couple have repeatedly told us that, done together making it easier, the discipline of fasting has given them a feeling of greater belief in themselves.
